On The Pragmatic Presupposition Of Modern Advertising

This paper gives a tentative analysis of working mechanism of presuppositions in advertising English by referring to the historical background and theoretical background of the study of presupposition, which, as the name implies, is a necessary precondition for the processing of any communication.In modern society, advertising plays a very important role in people's daily life. That is to say, today we can not imagine the world without so much advertising around us. The language of advertising is basically persuasive, therefore all possible means, linguistic or non-linguistic, have been adopted by advertisement writers to serve the purposes of adverting. As a very important topic in linguistics especially in pragmatics, presupposition is frequently employed in order to enhance the effects of persuasion in advertisements because of its own special properties and characteristics.To study advertising language from the perspective of presupposition is a new approach in recent years. Based on Relevance Theory Jean Stillwell Peccei points out in his Pragmatics that there exist some relations between presupposition and advertising language. Chen Xinren, a Chinese scholar, holds the same point of view. Their studies lay good foundation for this dissertation. However, the author of this dissertation thinks that the relations between presupposition and advertising language are of a complex subject matter. Therefore, the author of this dissertation further points out that presupposition has pragmatic functions in advertisements. Due to the complex relations between presupposition and advertising language, this dissertation expounds and analyzes the pragmatic functions that presupposition has in advertisements from three macroscopic angles: presupposition and the form of advertising language, presupposition and advertisement information, presupposition psychology and market strategies of advertisements. This dissertation features with its comprehensive, incisive and detailed studies on the subject matter, and it features with its vast amount of advertising data in the process of analysis. The author of this dissertation hopes that this dissertation can give theoretical guidance to the applying of presupposition in advertisements and hopes that it can help advertisements achievetheir actual goals.This dissertation consists of the following main parts. In Chapter One and Two the author discusses the definitions and the features of presupposition. Presupposition is originated in the field of philosophy and logic. However, it gradually involves the studies of language forms, structures, usage and functions. Based on Relevance Theory, presupposition triggers are introduced to be coherent with the later discussion. Chapter Three makes a review of the main reasons for application of pragmatic presupposition of advertisements. Advertisements are to give information, to arouse interest, to make claims more powerful, to keep politeness for consumers' face and to lead to the actual buying actions. Chapter Four makes detailed analysis of the functions of presupposition in advertising language through qualitative and quantitative study. Chapter Five further analyzes presupposition psychology and market strategies of advertisements. Finally Chapter Six summarizes the pragmatic presupposition in advertising and puts forward suggestions and limitations.The paper, which is based on the combination of qualitative and quantitative study, shows that presupposition phenomenon is closely connected with the language of advertising, the information of advertising, the discourse of advertising and the strategy of advertising. That is to say, presupposition is an important component of the overall message in advertising and plays an irreplaceable part in fulfilling the ultimate purposes of advertising.